1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device management apparatus that manages network devices connected to a network, a control method, and a computer-readable storage medium storing a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been proposed a method that efficiently manages network devices connected to two or more subnetworks using a network management technique such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). To manage a plurality of network devices connected to a plurality of subnetworks, there has been proposed a networked device management system in which a representative device is placed in each subnetwork (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-186765).
In the networked device management system described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-186765, a representative device collects information on other devices in each subnetwork. Then, the representative device sends the device information to a subnetwork representative device. Finally, the subnetwork representative device collects device information on all the devices in the subnetworks and sends the same to a network device management apparatus.
On the other hand, with a recent growing interest in security, IPV6 (Internet Protocol Ver.6) compatible with IPsec (Security Architecture for Internet Protocol) has been becoming widespread. Under such circumstances, part of an environment that has been using IPV4 (Internet Protocol Ver.4) is increasingly replaced with IPV6.
However, when the networked device management apparatus described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-186765 is operated in an environment in which a subnet using IPV6 (referred to as the IPV6 environment) and a subnet using IPV4 (referred to as the IPV4 environment) coexist, a situation explained hereinafter could occur. Specifically, a situation occurs in which a representative device collects device information on the IPV6 environment and sends the device information to the network device management apparatus operating in the IPV4 environment.
In this case, the device information collected by the representative device includes IPV6-related information, and hence the network device management apparatus present in the IPV4 environment cannot manage network devices in the IPV6 environment. Also, assuming that a network device in the IPV6 environment is a network device supporting both IPV6 and IPV4 (referred to as a dual stack device), the device information collected by the representative device includes information on both IPV6 and IPV4.
For this reason, the network device management apparatus present in the IPV4 environment can manage network devices in the IPV6 environment using IPV4, but this means that the network devices are managed outside a constructed high-security environment.